


Zombies and Highschool Kids

by Anime_PJ



Category: Gakuen Mokushiroku | Highschool of the Dead
Genre: Abusive Parent, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Horror, Romance, Semi-Suicidal Tendencies, emotional masochism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-06-16 01:19:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15425871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anime_PJ/pseuds/Anime_PJ
Summary: Paul Blake thought he had enough problems. Memories of an abusive father, drama with his friends, crushing on a girl who clearly despised him. But then the dead rose and people started dying, and really, all his problems looked kind of small in comparison.





	1. All They Want To Do Is Eat Our Brains

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, all. I'm not sure if anyone who reads my stuff on fanfiction.net is going to be reading this, but I figured I'd say this, anyway: I'm going to start posting my stuff on here now, as well. It's gonna be a slow transition, though, as I'm only going to post stuff when it's reached the quality of writing I'm at now, so it won't be on here all at once.
> 
> Right, so long as we've got that out of the way, let's get started.

**I would have happily told anyone that I was a perfectly ordinary teenager. And by most standards, I was. I was eighteen years old, and I attended a high school called Fujimi Academy, which is a school in Japan. My name – Paul Blake – made most people believe I had moved there from overseas at a younger age, but that was not the case. I couldn't remember living anywhere other than Japan**

**My father had moved out there when I was only a baby, and he had apparently neglected to bring my mother … if she was even alive. I have never met my mother, and my father never spoke of her, so where she was or even who she was, I did not know. I could never ask my father about this because, well … my father terrified me, to be quite frank. The man was in prison now, and I was still terrified of him. About the only thing I had ever managed to glean from my father was that he once lived in England.**

**My father was the abusive type, the type who would put out a cigarette on his child's skin if the ashtray wasn't near him at the time – he had actually done so to me on at least six occasions. I took great comfort in the fact that my father was in prison. I took even more comfort in the fact that, if my information was accurate, the son of a bitch had taken quite the beating before he was arrested. The thought of my father having the shit kicked out of him in an alleyway never failed to amuse me.**

**My school life was pleasant enough, though there were three things I could complain about. There was this girl with pink hair who seemed to think she was hot shit, and she made every attempt to show everyone just how much better than them she was. There was also a teacher – my homeroom teacher – named Shidou, whom practically everyone agreed was a straight-up asshole. The worst of them, though, the one that got to me the worst … was the girl who seemed to hate me for no real reason; she glared daggers at me if we caught each other's eyes, she shoved past me if I was close enough in the hallways, and if she had to speak to me, it was always in the disrespectful tone of someone who feels nothing but contempt to the person they're talking to.**

**Why was this the worst of them all? Well, despite how she seemed to hate me so much … I could feel certain feelings bubble up inside me whenever I caught sight of her. For every moment she spent being hostile toward me, I felt a fresh stab of pain in my heart. The strength she had, the confident way in which she carried herself, the majestic skill with which she wielded her boken when practising for her club, her general beauty as a woman … How could I see all that and not get a crush on her?**

**The name of this girl was Saeko Busujima.**

**So my life wasn't all that great. But as our story begins, it was about to get a whole lot worse … or maybe just that little bit better. Ladies and gentlemen, join us in witnessing the events that would lead me to transform from a scarred teenager with a bad past … to a survivor, a warrior in a world of the undead.**

**Let's start from the beginning …**

\----

I was sitting in one of the only peaceful classes I had – peaceful and boring. But Maths was the only subject that Busujima-san ever seemed to skip, so it was about the only lesson we had together where I had any peace of mind. That was kind of a shame, because it was the kind of lesson in which the death glares she so often sent me would actually liven things up a bit. I didn't want to be here, so I was about to do something I had never really done before: Skip class.

I raised my hand in the air, and the Sensei stopped with his lecture.

"Yes, Blake-kun?" the Sensei asked in the boring drawl that I – and every other student in the room – had come to despise so much.

"May I go to the bathroom, Sensei?" I asked politely. I wasn't worried about being caught. I never skipped class, so the Sensei wouldn't suspect a thing.

The Sensei sighed. "Fine. Just be quick about it."

"Thank you, Sensei." I stood up and walked swiftly out of the room. I was a pale lad, my skin very nearly white. My hair was shoulder-length and a very dark shade of red. My eyes were lime green and somewhat larger than usual. I was tall and thin, but didn't exactly lack in the muscle department – after years of abuse, I was determined to be strong enough to take the next bastard who tried to attack me head-on.

A relieved smile came over my face as I left the classroom. It was damn good to be free of that boring-ass classroom. I walked through the corridors of the school, looking for one stairwell in particular. I found it in no time. I saw a flash of bright pink hair vanishing around a corner, realised how lucky I was that the bitch had just left, and went into the stairwell, where one of my only friends stood leaning against a wall.

Takashi Komuro, my best friend, was a pretty average looking teenager. He was tall enough, and he had spiked up black hair and brown eyes. He wore a red T-shirt over the white dress-shirt of his school uniform, which also consisted of a black blazer, trousers, and a pair of dress shoes. I wore much the same, but without the red T-shirt, and I kept my dress shirt untucked to allow for comfort.

"Hi, dude," I said in greeting.

Takashi looked up and noticed me, putting on a half-assed smile. "Hey, man," he said. "What are you doing out here? You _never_ skip class."

"I was bored shitless." I shrugged. "Why do you _always_ skip class?"

Takashi let out a throaty, forced chuckle. "Touché."

Things descended into silence pretty quickly from there. I wasn't surprised by this in the slightest. Takashi had recently gone through a breakup with his now ex-girlfriend, Rei Miyamoto, and she had started dating his former best friend, Hisashi Igou. Both were close friends of mine, too. Because of Takashi's bitterness over the whole ordeal, I now filled the best friend role, though I wasn't sure I knew how to be a good friend to Takashi without sounding like a condescending asshole. So I quite often found myself avoiding the subject altogether.

The two of us continued to look down upon the front courtyard of the school … and we saw something rather curious. There was a man by the school gates, and he appeared to be trying to reach in through the gaps in the metal. A group of three teachers approached him and appeared to be speaking to him – Probably telling him to piss off, I thought. One of the teachers, the gym teacher if I remember correctly, walked to the gate and rather aggressively pulled the man into it; the banging of man against metal could be heard even from where Takashi and I stood. And the screams of the gym teacher as the man he was holding bit into his arm were pretty damn clear, too. The gym teacher fell to the ground, his arm spouting blood, and writhed in pain. He lay, convulsing, on the floor, and after a few moments lay still.

_Holy shit …_ I thought as I looked down on the scene below me. If I didn't know any better, I'd have thought this was z—

The only female teacher of the group leaned over the now-still body of the gym teacher … and then the gym teacher sat up, grabbed onto her, and bit into her neck, spreading her blood all over the floor and all over her biter. She was dragged to the ground, and the gym teacher, his flesh now greying, took bite after bite out of her skin. After swallowing a few more chunks of the unfortunate woman, the gym teacher stood up and began shambling after the only remaining teacher.

_Oh my fucking God …_ I thought in shock. _Zombies … actual fucking zombies! This … this sort of shit just can't be happening, can it?_ I wasn't normally one for freezing up in shock, but this … this was _insane_.

"… I've gotta go get Rei …" I heard Takashi mutter. I found it equal parts sweet and stupid that Takashi was so worried about a girl who had practically ripped his heart from his chest. But then again, I had an inkling of worry in the back of my mind for Busujima-san, and she treated me much like one would treat something they'd scraped from the bottom of their shoes.

Barely a moment after speaking, Takashi took off running through the corridors of the school, and I followed closely behind. We stopped outside a classroom; Takashi went in while I waited outside. I could see how awkward this conversation was going to be, and I did not want to be anywhere near it, no matter how bad the situation might be. I could hear a lot of shouting from inside the classroom … and the sharp, resounding sound of someone being slapped. I had heard it before – mostly when I was the one being hit – and I couldn't ever mistake it for something else.

A few moments later, Takashi exited the classroom with both Rei and Hisashi. Hisashi was a tall boy with grey hair, and he kept his uniform about as formal as it could get.

Rei had a rather unique appearance. Her hair had a strange colouration that looked like a mix of orange and brown; it was styled in a ponytail, and two antennae-like bangs stood out at the front. Her eyes were a reddish-brown. She wore the girls' school uniform, which consisted of a white dress shirt with a green collar, a black ribbon, and a green skirt that came to way above the knees. She had a slender figure and larger than average breasts. Despite having no such interest in her myself, I could certainly see why Takashi and Hisashi had such strong feelings for her, the attractive girl that she was. There was also a nasty red mark on her right cheek, which made me assume that Takashi had had to hit her to get her to listen to him. Not something I really approved of, but in a situation like this it was probably necessary.

I exchanged brief nods with Hisashi and Rei, assuming they were both aware of the situation by now, and the four of us took off through the halls without a word. Hisashi, Rei and I followed after Takashi, who seemed like he knew where he wanted to go. He stopped near a supply closet, so we did, too, and Takashi heaved it open and began looking through. He took out a golf club and handed it to me; he broke a broom handle and handed the now sharp stick to Rei; Hisashi opted to go unarmed, saying that he was a black-belt in karate; Takashi himself took out a baseball bat.

Now that we had weapons, there was only one question that mattered: What were we going to do? Nothing had really happened since the incident Takashi and I had witnessed at the gate, so just running through the school like this was going to make us look like we'd all gone crazy. _And why the hell was there sports equipment in the supply closet?_ I couldn't help but wonder.

"Maybe we should call the police," said Rei.

I didn't really see the point – if there was a zombie just casually hanging out in front of the school, the odds were that there were a whole lot more in other places. I didn't voice these thoughts, however. Takashi handed Rei his phone – being the only one of us to have his on him – and she dialled 1-1-0. Her face quickly became covered in worry, and it became clear that we wouldn't be able to get through to anyone.

The intercom system suddenly sprung to life in a burst of static. And then a panicked voice spoke.

"If I may have your attention, please. There is an emergency situation taking place inside the school. I must ask that you remain ca—" The sound of a door being forced open could be heard through the speakers. "No! No! How did you get in here!? Get away from me! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The intercom system cut off with a click.

The sheer amount of tension in the school at that moment could have been cut through with a knife. The situation was about as fucked up as it could get, and now every single person in the school knew it. The ground and walls of the school began to vibrate as screams of panic and terror began to rise up from all the classrooms; barely a second later, all the students and teachers began pouring out of the classrooms, every single one of them screaming in terror. Takashi, Rei, Hisashi and I were away from the classrooms, but we could clearly see the crowd trampling over one another through the windows.

In my personal opinion, the ones that got trampled to death were the lucky ones.

Hisashi walked past all of our shock-frozen forms and into a tunnel-like overpass.

"What are you doing?" Takashi asked him.

"The classroom building is too crowded, we'll have a better chance if we go to the roof," said Hisashi.

I moved to follow instantly, thinking it was a pretty solid plan. Rei did, too … but Takashi didn't move a muscle.

"Hisashi is right," Rei said with a glare when it looked like Takashi was about to start arguing. "Just shut up and do what he says."

Takashi moved to join us without another word.

We moved across the overpass until we came across someone who wasn't part of the crowd. It was one of the teachers, but … he didn't look quite like he should have. His skin had gone pale, turning a sort of grey colour, and his eyes appeared to have rolled back into his head, showing only white. He looked almost like he belonged in The Exorcist. The four of us stopped, but he seemed to know we were there, and he began shambling toward us. He seemed to be zoning in on Rei in particular.

"Rei! Stab him!" said Hisashi. Rei looked hesitant. "Don't hold back! Give it all you got!"

Rei still seemed to hesitate, and the zombified teacher drew closer, moaning out in a dead sounding voice. Her hesitance very nearly cost her, and the zombie grabbed onto her. They struggled – I didn't think I could safely get involved, seeing as Rei and the zombie were so close together, and if Takashi and Hisashi's lack of action was any indication, they thought much the same – and Rei tried to hold the zombie back by holding her makeshift spear out between them. The struggle went on for only a few more moments … and then Rei got angry.

She shoved the zombie a few feet away from her with some new burst of strength. "Don't fuck with me!" she said in an angry growl. She leapt forward and punctuated her words by whacking the zombie with her broom handle. "I'm a member of the spear martial arts club!" In her rage, she stabbed the sharp end of the spear into the left side of the zombie's chest, and the dead thing went limp.

I could feel a huge grin break out on my face.

Takashi fist pumped and said, "Yes!"

… And then the zombie moved again. It grabbed the spear that was still impaled in it and swung it to the side, forcing Rei into the wall, and she collapsed to the ground. The zombie went to move toward her, but she grabbed the handle end of the spear and pushed him away, struggling to keep him at bay.

"I don't get it!" Rei yelled in a panic. "I'm stabbing him in his heart … why is he still moving!?"

"… Because he _is_ dead …" I heard Takashi mutter beside me. "He's dead but still moving!"

Hisashi took the initiative and ran forward, grabbing the zombie by its arms from behind. It seemed as though Hisashi was relatively safe in doing this … and then the zombie turned its head and, despite an obvious struggle to do so, got it to do a full one-eighty. It opened its jaws and bit down on Hisashi's arm.

_What the fuck …?_ I thought as I watched on in horror. My eyes were wide at the display in front of me. _That … that shouldn't even be_ possible _! It should have broken its fucking_ neck _trying to pull that off! Just what the hell is going on here …?_

Hisashi's shouts made it sound like it hurt, but from what I could see, no skin was broken. There was certainly no blood, anyway. Rei stood up and tried desperately to pull the zombie off her boyfriend. After a few attempts, she turned to Takashi and I and glared at us fiercely.

"You two, do something!" she shouted at us. " _Do something, will you_!?"

Takashi and I sprinted forward. Takashi brought his baseball bat down on the zombie's back, and I took to swinging at its legs with my golf club. Neither of us could hit its head without risk of also hitting Hisashi, so we were doing our best to just get it off him.

But then a particularly loud yell from Hisashi caught my attention. I looked up from where I was hitting the zombie's legs, and, to my horror, its teeth had sunk deeper into Hisashi's arm and now blood was spouting out of it.

Takashi let out an angry yell and charged forward, bringing his bat down hard on the zombie's head. Its blood exploded outward, as did a few fragments of bone, and it released its bite on Hisashi, falling to the floor limply. The others all looked at least a little nauseated by this; strangely, however, I felt next to nothing. I felt sympathetic toward the man this vile creature once was, but that was all. The blood didn't bother me in the slightest.

We all panted from a surprising amount of exertion, but no one said anything. Hisashi began to clutch his bleeding arm. We began to move forward, though Hisashi was walking slightly slower than the rest of us. I slowed my pace a little as to walk with him.

"You've seen what these things are," I said to him grimly. "You know what normally happens now, right?"

Hisashi merely nodded in response, a resigned look on his face.

I felt a certain emptiness in my chest. It pained me to see one of my closest friends in such a condition. "Look on the bright side," I said, doing my best to fake an upbeat tone. I'm not sure how convincing it was. "This isn't the movies, it's _real life_. Who says it has to work the way we've always thought it did?"

I found that I didn't believe my own words. And, if the look on his face was anything to go by, neither did Hisashi. Yet still he managed to smile at me. It was weak, sure, but it was still a smile. I smiled sadly back.

The four of us ascended some stairs and found ourselves on the roof … and when I laid eyes on the city below, any hope of this ending quickly was sucked straight out of me. There was smoke rising up from several places, and the sheer amount of destruction was baffling to behold. It hadn't even been an hour, yet already the entire city looked like a scene from _World War Z_.

"What happened …?" asked Rei, a prominent shake in her voice. "Everything was fine a minute ago …"

Even if any of us had spoken afterwards, I doubt if it would have been heard. The deafening sound of helicopters approached rapidly, and then a number of military grade choppers flew right past the school, creating a gale of wind that blew up Rei's skirt, giving us all quite the view, and lead to Hisashi having to hold her up so that she wasn't blown over by the strong wind created by the choppers. As they passed by, Rei began waving her arms in the air.

" _Hey_!" she shouted at the top of her lungs. " _We're over here_!"

"Don't bother," said Hisashi. He was still clutching his wounded arm to his chest. "I wouldn't even waste your strength. That's the self-defence force. They probably have some kind of special mission. They aren't here to rescue us … they aren't even doing anything about that." He nodded toward the school grounds below us, where the few students and teachers that remained were either running for their lives or screaming in pain whilst the dead swarmed over them, ripping out chunks of flesh and bone with their teeth.

I was looking around. I was barely even registering the conversation my friends were having. My eyes scanned over the rooftop, searching for anything that might give us any sort of help. There were an awful lot of zombies on the roof, I noticed, especially when one considered the fact that they had gotten up here pretty damn quickly. But I chose to question that later, if I ever chose to question it at all. I looked past the zombies … and saw exactly what I was looking for. There was a set of stairs that lead up to what looked like some kind of large closet. If I remembered correctly, that was the closet where they kept extra tables and chairs in case any of the ones currently in use got broken.

"Hey, guys," I said, getting the attention of my three companions. I nodded toward the stairs. "If we can get up there, we can use the tables and stuff to barricade ourselves in, maybe wait for the situation to clear up a bit."

Curiously – and luckily for us – the zombies apparently hadn't noticed us at all. We briefly checked with Hisashi to see if he was still fit to run – he was – and then Hisashi, Rei and I all looked to Takashi. I wasn't quite sure why back then, but I felt like he should be the one to decide when to go.

"Let's go!" said Takashi, and we all sprung into action.

We took off across the rooftop in a sprint. Hisashi was lingering behind, but only slightly, and he was clutching at his wounded arm. Takashi, Rei and I killed any zombies that got directly in our way, but we avoided most of them because we didn't want to be slowed down. I honestly couldn't believe how easily we were taking this. The zombies were deathly pale and had white eyes, sure, but they still looked like students, teachers, old friends, and faces we may have passed in the hallway between classes … yet not one of us had any problem with killing them. The initial disgust at the bloodiness of it all had long since left the others.

We reached the stairs and ran up. Halfway up, however, Rei stopped and looked back down, probably making sure we weren't being followed too closely. There was one on the stairs just behind her, so she brought up her spear and, with a yell … stabbed it in the chest.

I honestly couldn't believe that, after all that stuff with the zombified teacher, she still hadn't aimed for the head when there was one of them right in front of her!

"Are you _nuts_?" Takashi asked, at the same time as I said, "Are you fucking _stupid_?" Apparently, we shared the same thought process but had different ways of wording our thoughts.

"Say what!?" Rei asked aggressively.

She got a nasty shock when the zombie she'd stabbed grabbed onto her spear and forced it to the side, making her smash against the wall and fall over on the stairs. The zombie, which was now crawling, made its way toward her …

Takashi readied his bat, but before he could do anything, Hisashi shouted Rei's name and took the bat from him, running down the stairs and smashing the bat against the zombie's head, forcibly slamming its head into the wall. Its blood and bones exploded from its head, surprisingly not splashing all over Rei, and the two of them began walking back up the stairs toward Takashi and I. Another zombie was halfway up the stairs when Hisashi charged it and kicked it, making it tumble down the stairs and smash its head off the floor.

When Hisashi and Rei got back up the stairs, the four of us got to work on making the barricade.

It was quite sturdy, which is surprising when one considers what it was built out of. We had carefully stacked up a number of tables and chairs, then tied them to the rails of the stairs with rope so that they would stay in place. A few zombies were banging on it, but that was nothing to worry about; they weren't even making it shake.

We were all sitting down and relaxing now that we had the chance to do so. I briefly wondered how long the barricade would last, but decided it didn't matter. We weren't planning on staying up here permanently, anyway.

Our moment of relaxation came to an abrupt end, however, when Hisashi started coughing. It started out fairly tame, but then it got worse. He was hunching over, near enough convulsing, and then he stood straight and coughed up quite a lot of blood. We crowded around him, Rei hugging onto him. We were all worried, and I thought I knew what was happening … and it saddened me greatly. I got the feeling the others knew, as well, but wanted to say something about as little as I did.

Hisashi's coughing fit stopped just long enough for him to speak. His voice was weak. "Looks like you were wrong, Paul," he said with a bitter chuckle. "It _is_ just like in the movies. You get bit … and that's it."

"That can't be true," Rei said through flowing tears. "What you see in the movies will never happen!"

"But it _did_ happen … to everyone else," said Hisashi. He turned his head to Takashi and I with what looked like quite a large and painful struggle. "Takashi … Paul … help me …"

"Help you with what?" Takashi asked him.

"Help me … over the rail. The force from the landing … should smash my head …"

"Why would you do something like that?" asked Rei. Her voice was now weak with tears.

"I DON'T WANNA BE ONE OF THEM!" Hisashi's shout was followed up by another coughing fit, in which he coughed up what looked to be most of his remaining blood supply. Now he really looked like he was having some sort of seizure.

"No! Hisashi!" cried Rei, hugging onto him as tightly as she could. " _You can't die_!"

Hisashi's coughing stopped as suddenly as it had started. He sat and convulsed for a few seconds … then stopped. Hisashi lay completely still. Not breathing. Not doing _anything_.

My blood felt like ice in my veins. I couldn't imagine what Rei was feeling, her being Hisashi's girlfriend and all, but I felt like some important part of my life had been torn away. I only had four real friends. Three of them were on that roof with me, but one of those three was now dead. I felt like I would have been crying if it weren't for the fact that I was so practised at holding it in.

I noticed the grip Takashi had on his bat visibly tighten.

"Get away from him, Rei," said Takashi. His voice was dead serious and quiet.

Rei looked up at him, her eyes wide, then threw herself over Hisashi's body like a protective shield. "No!" she said. "He's not turning! He's not turning into one of them! He's going to be fine!"

Takashi turned his gaze to me, a pleading look in his eyes. Understanding, I nodded at him. I walked forward and grabbed both of Rei's arms, pulling her up and away with ease despite her desperate struggles to get free. I took no pleasure in this, but I understood that it needed to be done.

Then Hisashi's hand twitched.

"See!" said Rei, yet again attempting to pull away from my grip on her arms. "Look! He's fine!" She struggled more. " _Let go of me_!"

"Sorry, Rei," I said, keeping any and all emotion out of my voice. "But that thing isn't Hisashi any more."

She continued to struggle, yelling out denials of what I said all the while.

Hisashi stood up. His greying skin and ghostly white eyes were all the proof I needed to tell me he most certainly wasn't fine.

"I know you can't believe it," said Takashi. His voice sounded blank.

"You can't," Rei whimpered.

"Even _I_ can't believe it."

"Don't do it."

"But it's happening."

"Takashi …"

"IT'S HAPPENING!" Takashi yelled at the top of his lungs as he charged forward, raising his bat high, and then he brought it down hard on Hisashi's head. Blood and brains washed all over the floor near the corpse.

" _No_!" Rei screamed, and I finally let her go. She ran forward to kneel beside her dead boyfriend. "Why?" she asked Takashi, looking up at him with her tear-stained face.

"He would have bitten you if I didn't do that," said Takashi.

"I didn't ask you to save me!" Rei said in a growl. "How would you know, anyway? What are you, some kind of expert?" She sniffed and looked down at Hisashi. "… Then I would've been willing to get bitten. Better to die like that than survive by doing something like this …"

"I don't think Hisashi would have wanted that for you," said Takashi.

"How would you know that, Takashi!?" Rei's face broke out in a deranged smirk, like she was mocking him. "Oh, I know, you must've hated Hisashi, right? _Because he was dating me_!"

I had kept silent during the argument, knowing that these two had a lot of emotional baggage to sort out. This, however, I thought was too harsh. Takashi was bitter about the fact that Rei dumped him and started going out with Hisashi, sure, but he had never _hated_ the guy … at least, not to my knowledge.

I was about to say something when Takashi just started walking over to the barricade. He wasn't saying a word. Even worse, he wasn't making any effort to deny what Rei had just said.

"Where do you think you're going!?" Rei's tone was still aggressive.

Takashi turned around to face her. "You obviously don't want me around," he said blankly. "I'm gonna go downstairs and smash some heads."

I recoiled at his statement, as did Rei.

"What are you talking about?" asked Rei. Her voice had gone from angry to panicked. "You can't take that many by yourself!"

Takashi didn't respond. He started to climb over the barricade.

"Hey … Takashi?" I said as gently as I could. I was fully prepared to go and pull Takashi down if he went too far, though I hoped it didn't come to that. "Takashi, stop messing around!"

Rei suddenly ran forward and grabbed Takashi by the arm. She was crying again, and she was clinging to his arm like her life depended on it. "I'm sorry!" she cried. "I didn't mean it! I _really_ didn't mean it! So, please … stay with me. _Don't leave me_!"

That was all the crying she got done before Takashi climbed down from the barricade and wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug. She seemed surprised by this, but hugged back after a few moments. They stood there without a word being said, simply resting in each other's arms.

I found myself smiling softly at the sight. It would appear that, despite everything that had happened, the two of them still had feelings for each other.

_That's good,_ I thought as I watched the two of them. _That means they have something to fight for … and I don't._

I let a sad smile appear on my face as Takashi and Rei seemed to forget I was even there.


	2. Breaking Out of Pris- I Mean, School

 

"All set?" I called out to Rei. Takashi and I were clutching a long, thick fire hose and aiming it at the slowly failing barricade. Takashi had apparently loosened something in his attempts to climb over, and that was making it all the easier for the zombies to break through. Takashi and Rei had begun to refer to the zombies as "Them," but that only served to confuse me, so I stuck to calling them zombies.

"Ready!" I heard Rei call out from her spot by the water valve that was on the far side of the small closet we had gotten the tables and chairs out of. The reason both Takashi and I were holding on to the hose was because it was big, and that meant it would be  _really_ powerful; the odds were that it would go completely out of control if it weren't held down properly. One could never be too careful.

Takashi looked at me and nodded. I nodded back in confirmation.

"Crank it!" Takashi yelled to Rei.

I heard the water flowing through the hose before I felt it, and before I knew it, the hose was spraying torrents of cold water at the deteriorating barricade. The flow of the water was so powerful that it broke through what remained of the barricade almost instantly and knocked any zombies in front of it off their feet. I could distinctly hear necks snapping and skulls cracking as the undead beasts were flung down the stairs and onto the concrete rooftop. Grinning, I held my hand up for a high five, which Takashi gave me with no hesitation whatsoever. The water shut off, and Rei came around the corner to see the results of our handiwork. Takashi and I dropped the hose and picked up our weapons.

"Remember when the fire-fighters showed us how the hoses work back in junior high?" Rei asked suddenly. I knew the question was directed solely at Takashi, as I had only met these two upon entering high school. Takashi and Rei shared a laugh.

I laughed, as well. "They did that at my school, too," I said. "One of the class clowns got a hold of one of the hoses and ended up spraying all the teachers. Let me tell you, we didn't see him for a  _while_."

I spoke fondly of my old classmate, the old class clown, but I hadn't truly known him very well. I hadn't known anybody very well, as a matter of fact, until I had started attending high school. When I thought about it, my father's abuse had effected me more than I had initially thought, apparently leaving marks on me that I took outside that monstrously terrifying household. With Hisashi gone, I only had one real friend other than Takashi and Rei. I didn't count on Kouta being alive, though. It wasn't that I didn't have faith in him, but the odds weren't exactly in Kouta's favour. Unless, of course, he somehow got hold of a gun …

_He'd probably geek out for too long and get eaten,_ I thought with a fond smile.  _As unlikely as it is, I really hope Kouta's alive … It'd be a shame to lose another friend._ There was one other person I really wanted to be alive, but I sincerely doubted she would be happy to see  _me_ alive … and that thought brought the empty feeling in my chest back full force.

"Let's go," said Takashi, and our brief moment of normality ended.

Our time on the rooftop had been brief, but it had changed us far more than any of us cared to admit. It had changed me, anyway. For the first time in a long time, I was scared, and for the first time in my life the fear wasn't for myself. I had lost a friend already, and as much as I tried to push it down, the underlying fear that I would lose the others was a constant from that moment onward.

In some ways, it was even worse than being scared for myself.

* * *

_**Thirty minutes earlier …** _

We sat there in complete silence after Rei and Takashi finally broke their hug. I found that I really didn't want to speak, if only to maintain the illusion that the world was still calm, still as peaceful as it had been when I'd woken up that morning.

"This is really fucked up," said Takashi, breaking the silence.

Rei looked at him, frowning. "You're so blunt," she said.

"What good would it have done if he'd lied about it?" I asked. I gestured with my head to the barricade, which could be seen visibly moving and breaking as the zombies pushed against it from the other side. I could tell that it wouldn't take them long to break through. I could hear their throaty moans as they tried to get to us.

After a few more moments of silence, Rei stood up and looked at Takashi. "Give me your phone," she said.

Takashi handed her his phone without protest. "We still can't get through to 1-1-0," he said. "Even if your dad's on the force …" He never finished his sentence, but I knew what he was getting at. I was sure Rei did, too.

"It's okay," said Rei. "He gave me this secret number he said never to call unless it's an emergency." She dialled the number into the phone while saying this, then put the phone to her ear. Apparently thinking better of it, she took the phone away from her ear and set it to speaker so that we could all hear. The familiar sound of the phone being answered resounded after a few seconds, and Rei near enough jumped for joy.

"Hello?" came a man's voice from the other end of the phone. I could only assume it was Rei's father. "This number is … Takashi-kun, that you?"

"Dad? Dad!? We're at school …" Rei was practically screaming the words, but she was cut off.

"Hello? Takashi-kun? Did you get this number from Rei? Is she safe …?"

There lay the only problem. It would seem that Rei's father couldn't hear anything from our end.

That didn't stop Rei from trying, though. "Dad! Can you hear me!?"

Static began to sound through the phone, and we could only hear bits and pieces of what Rei's father was saying. "… is. Got it? Your family … from there to town …"

"Dad!  _Dad_!" There was no "practically" about it; Rei was now full-on screaming. Tears were leaking from her eyes.

The distorted voice of Rei's father continued, "… it seems …" There was a loud  _thud_ on the other end of the line. "Got it? The town …"

And then the line went dead.

"He … hung up …" Rei said weakly, fighting her tears and losing miserably. She looked down at the phone. "No signal? But I was just on the phone! Why!? How!?" She was relentlessly pushing buttons on the phone. She was shouting at it angrily.

"Rei!" Takashi shouted at her.

I just watched on. I wanted to help, I really did, but my input wouldn't have been of much use to any of us. I didn't even know what having caring family members was like, so I sure as hell wouldn't understand what  _worrying_ about a family member was like.

Rei looked at Takashi, the tears openly pouring from her eyes now. "Takashi. My dad never …" she sniffed, "… realised it was me!" She began sobbing loudly, and Takashi moved in to hug her again.

_It might not have been the phone that died,_ I couldn't help but think.

* * *

_**Present …** _

After all that, Rei had come up with the idea to use the hose. In the meantime, all I could offer were a few encouraging words. I couldn't pretend to understand what my two friends were going through in regards to their families, so I couldn't say anything understanding or reassuring without lying through my teeth. I assumed my mother was dead because I had always lived alone with my father (who I  _really_ fucking hoped was dead). I only called that man my father as a courtesy, a courtesy that he in no way deserved.

The three of us walked down the stairs and across the roof together, killing any zombies we happened to pass along the way. I planned on following Takashi's lead – and I assumed Rei did, too – since I had no real plan of my own. I had always been more of a follower, anyway.

"Where … do we go?" asked Rei.

I was right; she was planning on following Takashi's lead. Takashi put on a smile, but I could tell it was fake; I didn't point that out, though. Takashi had every right to be unhappy – we were  _all_ unhappy. If anything, Takashi being able to put on even a fake smile was rather impressive given the circumstances.

"Our homes!" said Takashi, his voice filled with clearly fake enthusiasm. "Staying here forever won't do us any good. We'll hook up with other survivors somehow and help each other get back home. Even though we all live up in the dorms, everybody's from town. Something'll come of it."

Rei's eyes widened slightly. "Oh yeah, I bet you're both worried about your families, too," she said. She sounded somewhat guilty about not having considered our own situations earlier.

"Well, the only family I have can't help us out, anyway," I said quickly. "They're way outside this city. So we only really need to worry about you two."

No, I hadn't told them about my father's abuse. Was I going to? Not if I could help it. Not only did dragging up old memories make me feel really shitty inside, I didn't want to come off as any stranger than I already had. The loner attitude I put up around most people already made me seem weird enough.

"I can't call my parents, anyway," said Takashi. "My dad's on a business trip and my mom's an elementary school teacher, so she's not home. If we called she'd just make a racket about us interrupting her."

"Don't make me laugh at a time like this!" Rei said to him, trying and failing to stifle her laughter.

The fact that Takashi's mother was a school teacher made me worry about him. When I looked around and considered the situation at our own school, I could only begin to imagine how Takashi must be feeling about his mother being in the same sort of environment. But again, I had no mother, so I kept my mouth shut because there was no way I would be able to truly understand.

We went back into the school through the roof. It was relatively quiet where we were, as apparently the zombies had gone elsewhere to look for food. We made our way carefully and quietly through the blood-soaked corridors of our once great school.

_Blam!_

The noise stopped us in our tracks. We all looked around, confused, wondering where the loud noise had come from. There wasn't much in our school that could produce a noise like that. It almost reminded me of a …

"Gunshot?" Takashi suggested.

"Not loud enough," I said. "If it was a real gun it'd be louder, and real ones don't echo like that did. It's probably makeshift from a bunch of crap they found lying around school. If they're still alive, we should probably go find them." I couldn't help the small spark of hope that sprung up within me. There was only one person I knew who could improvise a gun and have it work perfectly …

"They're coming from the faculty room," said Rei.

The three of us took off running in the direction of the supposed gunshots. We ran and ran and ran, and our resolve only increased when the scream sounded out: blood-curdling and terrified. Despite the situation and the need for other survivors, I could not help feeling dread encircle me as I thought  _That scream sounds unpleasantly familiar …_

And, whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, the scream came from someone we all knew.

We turned the corner near the faculty office and saw the screamer: Saya Takagi. She had bright pink hair that was tied up in two long ponytails. As we arrived, she was in the process of drilling a zombie between the eyes with a power drill. Its blood and brain matter flew everywhere as the tool spun around inside its cranium.

"Damn you!" Takagi-san screamed at it. "Die! Die!"

From around the corner, arriving at the same time we did, came two women. One of these two was the school nurse, Shizuka Marikawa. She was a blonde bombshell with hair that reached her waist, and breasts that would make any man drool a waterfall. The humorous image of her beating a zombie to death with them briefly crossed my mind, and made me laugh a little despite the circumstances. As one of the faculty members at the school, she dressed formally in a white dress shirt and a long brown skirt, which at the moment was torn at the sides, probably to aid in movement. She was the only person that I knew of who knew of the abuse my father inflicted upon me; being the school nurse, she had all my medical files, which mostly consisted of all the damage the bastard had done to me over the years.

The other woman was a student, one that I recognised in an instant. I was relieved to see her safe, yet I knew that problems were just waiting to happen if the past was anything to go by. The girl was none other than my boken-wielding crush, Saeko Busujima. She had long, straight purple hair that came down in a triangular fringe at the front. She was slender and had a full, curvy figure. Her beauty was truly a sight to behold. Our eyes met briefly, and hers narrowed in a glare, but she quickly caught herself and seemed to focus on the situation at hand.

"Me and Paul got the ones on the right," Takashi said to Rei. "You help her with the left."

Everyone nodded, and we got to work. I used my golf club with great efficiency as I brought it down on the waiting skulls of the zombie horde. It broke cleanly into their heads, spraying their blood and brain matter everywhere as it was removed. Me with my golf club, Takashi with his baseball bat, Rei with her spear, and Busujima-san with her boken; blood and brains flew everywhere as the four of us bashed and stabbed at the heads of the undead monsters.

I was quite surprised during all this to find that I wasn't all that bothered. It wasn't like I was only just numbing to it, either. From the very beginning, I could not remember ever being bothered by the fact that I was bashing in the heads of my schoolmates and teachers. My mind came to a conclusion almost subconsciously: For quite possibly the first time in my life,  _I_ was the one dealing out the damage, I wasn't the one  _taking_ it. The idea of being the one on top, the one who dealt the blows rather than being subjected to them, was actually  _exciting_ me.

_What the hell did that bastard make me into …?_ I found myself wondering.

I smashed in the head of one final zombie and looked at the others. Everyone was covered in blood, myself included. The others were all panting from the exertion, but otherwise looked no worse for the ware.

"Takagi-san, are you okay?" asked Rei.

"Miyamoto …" Takagi-san whimpered out.

"I take it you know Nurse Marikawa?" Busujima-san said to Takashi. "I'm Saeko Busujima. Third year, class A."

"Takashi Komuro, Class 2-B," said Takashi.

Rei took a look at Busujima-san and her face exploded in delight. "You're Busujima-senpai, who won the national tournament last year," she said. "I'm Rei Miyamoto from the spear club."

"Ah, uh …" said a male voice. This was my other good friend, Kouta Hirano. He was an overweight student with black hair and large, square-rimmed glasses. He kept his uniform on as formally as he could – blazer closed and everything – and he also happened to be holding what looked like a modified nail gun. "I'm K-Kouta Hirano from c-class B," he said.

"Hey, Kouta," I said with a wide smile. I liked Kouta because I could somewhat relate to him. We'd both had to put up with shit from other people, and we'd both been effected because of it. "Good to see you alive, buddy. Nice nail gun."

Kouta smiled back at me. "Thanks," he said. "It's good to see you alive, too, Paul. Oh, you should have seen me with this baby …" He held up his nail gun with a wide grin on his face, a grin which I mimicked.

"I can picture it quite clearly," I said. "Kouta Hirano, resident gun-toting badass." We shared another smile.

"Nice to meet you," Saeko said to Kouta after he and I had finished our little exchange. She gave him a smile, and despite the fact that it wasn't aimed at me, just seeing it made my insides flutter.

They all looked at me. I wasn't quite sure why – everyone knew me except for the nurse and maybe Takagi-san, since she seemed to pay so little attention to people.

"Paul Blake, class 3-A," I said. "Now can we get the fuck on with this?" I didn't mean to sound so aggressive, but being stared at like that put me on edge a little.

"What's everyone getting all slack-jawed over?" Takagi-san asked angrily.

"What are you talking about, Takagi?" Takashi asked her.

"Don't mock me!" Takagi-san yelled. "I'm a genius! I'm smarter than all of you combined!"

"It's okay now," said Busujima-san. She approached Takagi-san slowly and gently. "Stop this."

Takagi-san caught sight of her reflection in a nearby mirror and tensed up. Her face was full of despair. "Aww, I got dirty," she said quietly. "I'll have to tell mom to take this to the cleaners …" She suddenly broke down in a torrent of tears, sobbing loudly. She hugged Busujima-san to her, sobbing into her chest. The rest of us were silent.

We all just stood there and let her release the emotions that had clearly been building for quite a long time now.

* * *

Takashi, Kouta and I pushed the desk up against the door of the faculty office. After the final shove, we rested, panting from the exertion. The desks in the faculty office were a lot heavier than the ones used in the classrooms.

"That'll do it," Takashi said with a sigh.

"Yep," Kouta said, equally out of breath.

"Good," I said. "That means we can take a break."

The fact that the desks in the faculty office were heavier than they looked made them ideal for barricading ourselves in here. I had to smile a little at the convenience of having a few large, heavy objects in the room. Other than Hisashi's untimely death – which still made me feel a little empty when I thought about it – things had actually been going our way so far, and I hoped it would stay that way a little while longer. But I didn't bet on it.

Kouta started wandering around the room, and he happened to pass by the bathroom that Takagi-san had gone into. The sounds of a sink running could be heard through the open door. Kouta took a peak inside.

"Takagi-san, are you all right?" he asked as he stuck his head in the door. He froze there, and when he next spoke his voice had a sort of croaky quality to it. "Y-you wear glasses?"

"So what!?" Takagi-san's voice yelled out at him. "My contacts keep slipping out!"

Takagi-san then walked out of the bathroom, and she was indeed wearing a pair of thin-framed glasses. She looked rather pretty with them on, I admit, but they did nothing to hide the constantly annoyed expression on her face, unfortunately.

"Marikawa-sensei, where are your keys?" asked Takashi.

"They're in my bag," said Marikawa-sensei as she rooted through her handbag.

"No offence, but can your car even hold all of us?" I asked. I didn't want to sound rude, but Marikawa-sensei didn't strike me as someone who kept a lot of company, so I couldn't imagine that she'd have a car that could hold a lot of people.

Marikawa-sensei froze, and she began to look quite embarrassed. "Oops, I don't think it will …"

"What about the minibus the clubs use for field trips?" Kouta suggested. He had taken up a spot staring out the window. "The key's on the wall rack. The bus is still in the parking lot."

"A bus is fine and all, but where to?" asked Marikawa-sensei.

"We'll make sure all our families are safe," said Takashi. "We'll stop at everyone's houses, starting with the closest, and, if necessary, help them out. Then we'll look for somewhere safe. We're sure to find a spot."

"The police and special forces are on call, so there's gotta be shelters like when earthquakes hit," said Takagi-san.

"What is it?" Rei asked suddenly. "What's going on …?" She picked up a remote from a nearby desk and used it to turn on the TV that was mounted on the wall.

"… in response to the riots raging all over the country, the government has enacted emergency countermeasures," said a reporter on the TV. "However, the special forces public security operation is paying no heed to the current opposition party, and there is a strong argument for more cautious action …"

"Riots!?" Takashi yelled, suddenly rather angry. "What do they mean,  _riots_!?"

"Already casualties are estimated in excess of one thousand," the reporter continued. "Prefectural governors are declaring a state of emergency and requesting disaster relief …" Several loud gunshots could be heard off-screen. "There are gunshots! The police have finally started firing! I don't know the situation, but …" A group of bloodied, decaying zombies walked into view of the camera, and the camera fell to the floor with a crash. Nothing more could be heard but the pained, blood-curdling screams of the reporter and the cameraman as they were eaten alive by the walking dead. The screen cut to static and all that could be seen were the words:  _Please Stand By_.

" _That_ was all they had to say about this shit!?" Takashi yelled.

"They're trying to avoid a panic," I said calmly. It wasn't easy to stay calm, mind you, but panicking and shouting was going to get us nowhere.

"Wow, one of you idiots is  _right_ about something for a change," said Takagi-san half-heartedly.

"Well fuck you, too, Takagi-san," I said, flipping her the bird.

"But isn't it a little late for that?" Rei asked.

"It's the perfect time for it!" Takagi-san snapped. "Fear gives rise to chaos. Chaos gives rise to the collapse of social order. And when social order collapses … how do you propose we retaliate against the walking dead?"

_With a crossbow-wielding badass and a comatose cop,_ I thought, struggling not to chuckle to myself. I picked up the remote for the TV from where Rei had left it, and then I began to flip through the channels. It really was  _everywhere_. It was here in Japan. It was in France. Spain. England. The United fucking States! Every single news network I found was talking about the zombies, showing footage of the cities in ruin. And every single one of them was trying to pass it off as mass rioting.

"When I surfed the net this morning everything was fine," said Kouta. His voice was quiet, empty.

"It can't be …" said Rei, "… in just a few hours the whole world's gone to hell. I'm right, aren't I? There's got to be somewhere safe, right? Things have got to go back to how they were …"

"Probably not," I said bluntly. I bit my own tongue afterwards, though; I hadn't meant to say that out loud.

"Did anyone ask for your input?" Busujima-san asked me, glaring. Her voice was angry, but not really aggressive … it was quite strange.

I held my hands up in surrender. "Okay, for fuck sake,  _sorry_ ," I said. "I didn't realise it was illegal to  _speak_ now, especially when I'm saying what we're basically all fucking thinking." She looked surprised, and I  _felt_ surprised. That was the first time I had ever spoken back to her. It didn't stop the pained feeling in my chest in response to her apparent hatred, though. I doubted anything could ever numb that …

"Stop arguing, you two," Takagi-san ordered us. She gestured her head at me. "He's right. This is a pandemic, there's  _nothing_ we can do!"

"Pandemic …" Marikawa-sensei muttered.

"I mean explosive infection! As in the same illness breaking out all over the world." I could hear her intelligence on full display as she spoke. As much as I hated to admit it, she had every right to brag about her smarts.

"Like the flu?" asked Takashi.

"The Spanish Flu in 1918 was the same. And more recently, the Bird Flu was feared to have the same potential. You know how you can't take flu lightly, right? The Spanish Flu hit more than six hundred million people and claimed the lives of five hundred million …"

"It could be closer to the Black Death from the 14th Century," said Marikawa-sensei.

"A third of Europe died." Takagi-san nodded in agreement.

"How did the spread of infection stop?" asked Takashi.

"There are different theories, but the most commonly believed is that, when enough people die, it just peters out because there's nobody left to infect," said Marikawa-sensei.

"But …" Kouta said with a sigh, "now everyone who dies gets up and attacks other people."

"Meaning there's no reason this should stop," said Busujima-san.

"The weather should be warming up soon, so if the flesh rots off and there's only bone they should stop moving," said Marikawa-sensei.

"How long will that take?"

"There are five stages of decomposition," I said. Busujima-san looked a little irritated that I had spoken, but a moment later her face took on its serious quality again. I briefly noted that her annoyed look lasted a much shorter time than it normally did. "Initial Decay, Putrefaction, Black Putrefaction, Butyric Fermentation, and Dry Decay.

"Initial Decay is what we're seeing here: grey skin, sunken eyes, the works. Putrefaction is when the gases build up and the body gets fat, particularly around the facial area; the skin gets pretty loose, too, and it'll just sort of start to peel off. Black Putrefaction turns the skin black, lets all the built-up gases escape – which flattens out the body – and all the internal organs liquefy … including the brain. So, if they're going to decompose, I'd guess that they'd die during the Black Putrefaction stage. It normally takes about twenty days to reach that point. The whole decomposition process itself takes almost a year to complete."

I stopped speaking and noticed everyone was staring at me. While Marikawa-sensei looked almost impressed with my knowledge on the subject, everyone else was looking at me in a  _What the hell?_ sort of way. I scratched the back of my neck sheepishly and felt the heat rise to my face. I  _really_ didn't like being stared at.

"As impressive as it is that you know that …" said Takashi. "I still have to ask …  _why_ do you know that?"

"You could fill an encyclopedia with the amount of weird shit I've found just by surfing the net when I'm bored," I said, shrugging. I shuffled on my feet uncomfortably. "Anyway, why does it matter? It gives us a time frame to work with, doesn't it?"

"We don't even know if they'll rot or not," said Takagi-san, sighing.

"What do you mean?" asked Takashi.

"The corpses reanimate and attack people," said Takagi-san. "It defies modern science. Worst case scenario is that they  _never_ decompose …"

"We can hope," I said. "They already look like they've  _started_ , at the very least."

"Once we've ascertained our families' well-being, the big question is where we go after that," said Busujima-san. "If we panic and run around aimlessly we'll never survive."

"A team," said Takashi. "We form a team. Let's gather other survivors."

"How do we get out?" asked Rei.

"The front entrance will bring us out closest to the parking lot," I said, trying to be helpful.

"Let's go!" said Takashi.

And then we went off running, fighting through the corridors of the school once again …

* * *

"These guys only react to noise!" Takagi-san told us as we moved through the school. "And they're strong enough to bust down a door, so if they catch you they'll eat you. Watch yourselves."

_Thank you for the advice, oh wise one,_ I thought to myself. I could see the value in knowing the zombies were blind – I would have to have been mad not to – but I found it irritating that Takagi-san felt the need to remind us that the zombies would eat us if they caught us. As if we didn't already fucking know that!

As we continued to move through the school, a scream sounded out – it sounded relatively close by. We didn't even need to communicate; we simply set off running in the direction the scream was coming from, hoping that whoever it was was still alive when we got there. We ran for a short period of time before coming across a stairwell; there was an unusually large amount of zombies making their way down the stairs. The distinct sound of people fighting could be heard over the constant moaning of the undead horde.

I managed to get a look over the zombies' heads – which wasn't easy, considering how crowded in they were – and saw that, in the middle of the stairwell, stood five other students, three male and two female. The zombies were fast approaching them from both up and down the stairs, and one of the boys was getting ready to fight with a baseball bat.

But before the first zombie could get to him, it went tumbling to the ground, a nail sticking out of its head courtesy of Kouta's nail gun.

And then all hell broke loose again.

I didn't really remember the fight. I supposed it was because I was already used to it, that all the fights were now sort of blending together, nothing to really make them stand out from each other. I remembered the blood, the sound of bones breaking, the large number of corpses I had to step over in order to move after a while. The only thing I particularly remembered about this fight – the one thing that made it stand out among all others – was that all five of the people we were protecting were alive by the end.

Once all the zombies were disposed of, one of the girls in the group stepped forward.

"Thank—!" Her loud words of gratitude were swiftly cut off.

"Not so loud," Busujima-san warned her. "Was anybody bitten?"

A nervous look crossed the girl's face. "Uh … no, nobody."

"They look okay," said Rei. "Honest." Nobody disputed her.

"We're getting out of here," Takashi said to the group we had just saved.

"You coming?" I asked them.

"Y-yes," said the other girl in the group.

Our group, now larger by five, continued down the stairs, rapidly making our way to the front of the school. We killed and avoided the zombies as we passed them. It took us no time at all to reach where we wanted to go. However, when Takashi – who was at the head of our group – went to turn the corner that would take us to the area of the lockers, he jumped back almost immediately, knocking into me in the process. I barely managed to keep myself from falling over.

" _There are tons of them_ ," Takashi whispered.

"They can't see us," said Takagi-san. "So there's no need to hide."

"Then prove it, Takagi," said Takashi. Takagi-san's confident was replaced by a slightly more fearful one, and Takashi sighed. "Even if Takagi-san's theory is right … we can't move anywhere quietly with all these people."

"Somebody has to clear a path," said Busujima-san.

There were a few moments of silence, then Takashi sighed. "Okay, I'll do it," he said.

"No, Takashi, I should go …" said Rei.

"I should go first," said Busujima-san.

"No," said Takashi. "Busujima-senpai, I need you ready in case anythi—"

I didn't stay to listen to anything else; I was already making my way down to the lockers. I was halfway there by the time any of them seemed to notice I was gone. I was moving slowly, trying not to make any noise, and I was succeeding more than I thought I would. My breathing was steady and my heart was beating rapidly in my chest. I was scared, but relatively calm at the same time. As much as I disliked Takagi-san as a person, I had never once questioned her intelligence, and I had the utmost confidence that her theory was correct. I just thought I might as well test it for everyone instead of wasting time by standing there and fighting about who does so. Plus, everyone else in the group had more to lose should they die, so I thought it logical that I should be the one to take the risk.

I reached the middle of the room, where the zombies were most plentiful, and held my breath. There was one approaching me, coming straight toward me … and it walked past me, bumping my shoulder a little as it did so. Apparently they didn't even react to being touched. I released the breath I had been holding and allowed a smile to worm its way onto my face.

There was a shoe by my feet; it was covered in blood, but I wasn't really bothered. I knelt down, picked up the shoe, stood up again, then threw it down the corridor. It made a loud  _bang_ as it hit the wall, and all the zombies surrounding me started moaning and groaning. They began shambling past me and down the hallway toward the shoe, eventually emptying it out entirely.

With a smile, I walked toward the entrance doors of the school and held them open, signalling with my arm that the others should make their way down.

The others moved quickly but quietly, running down the stairs. Takashi made it out and looked at me seriously.

"Why did you just move ahead?" he asked in a whisper. "We were discussing who should go."

"The more time we spent discussing that, the more likely it is that one of the undead freakbags would've heard us," I whispered back. "Plus, it's pretty obvious to me that I'm the most expendable one here. So I just figured it might as well be me who took the risk."

Takashi looked like he was about to say something else to me … but then the last guy came out of the building, accidentally hitting the frame of the door with the large pole he had been using as a weapon on his way out. The resulting sound echoed through the hallway we had just come out of, and likely echoed through a few other hallways, too. The zombies that had been distracted by the shoe turned around and began to approach us, as did the zombies outside the school.

"… Shit," I said.

"RUN!" Takashi yelled at the top of his lungs. And run we did.

"Why'd you yell!?" Takagi-san asked Takashi as we all ran for our lives. "If we'd been quiet, we might've gotten away by just dealing with the closest ones!"

"The sounds echoed anyway, so wouldn't have done any good!" said Rei.

"Less talking, more running!" Takashi yelled at them.

I ran faster than I could ever remember running. Every time a zombie got in my way,  _crack_ , its brain was no longer contained within its skull. It was so intense that I barely noticed the members of the group we had saved being dragged down and eaten alive one by one. I just kept running and fighting.

Takashi was the first to reach the bus, myself hot on his heels, and, as expected, the bus was locked.

"Sensei!" Takashi yelled at Marikawa-sensei. "The key!"

Marikawa-sensei made it over, unlocked the bus with the key from the faculty room, and the lot of us piled in as fast as we could manage. Takashi and Busujima-san were the last ones to climb in, and they were about to close the door when the sounds of someone calling out stopped them in their tracks.

We all looked out the door of the bus and saw a large group of students being lead by a teacher. The teacher was a tall, thin man, whose appearance had always reminded me somewhat of a snake. He wore a pair of thin-framed glasses, and his hair was shoulder-length and black, just as black as his eyes were. His appearance warned one not to trust him way before his behaviour did.

"It's Shidou-sensei, from my homeroom," I said. I wasn't exactly thrilled to see my douchebag of a teacher, but I supposed it was good that more people had survived.

" _Shidou_ …" Rei's voice came out in a hate-filled whisper.

"Wait jut a little bit, Marikawa-sensei," said Takashi.

"But they're gathering in front of us," said Marikawa-sensei, panicking, "and at this rate we'll flip the bus if we try to run them down."

Takashi looked like he was about to jump off the bus to help when Rei grabbed his arm. "You can't save him!" she shouted. I could tell from her tone of voice that she wasn't saying he was unable to save Shidou … she was  _telling_ him not to save Shidou.

"Rei! What are you talking about!?" Takashi asked her in shock and surprise.

"You don't have to save him!" she said. "He's better off dead!"

"That's a bit harsh," I said, but I wasn't sure I believed my own words. "I'll admit he's an asshole, but that's nothing to kill him over."

Rei levelled a glare at me, and I backed down immediately. It was too late not to help, though, as barely a moment later the students began to pile onto the bus. Shidou got on the bus after them, but one of his shoes was covered in blood – and it was only the bottom of it. No one else had blood-stained shoes, and the fact that Shidou did made me more than a little suspicious and paranoid.

Shidou closed the door of the bus behind him. "You saved us," he said, panting. "I take it either Busujima-san or Blake-san is the leader?"

I let out an involuntary snort of laughter. "Not on your life," I said.  _Which I would gladly sacrifice, by the way,_ I added in my mind.

"No one's in charge," Busujima-san said, as if I hadn't spoken. "We worked together to survive."

The bus was moving now, and the zombies in front of it were becoming little more than splats of blood and guts on the road.

"That won't do," said Shidou, smiling like a snake. "One needs leadership to survive. A leader to set the goals and protect the social order …"

"You're going to regret this," Rei said to Takashi. "I swear you'll regret saving him …"

I slumped myself down in an empty chair near the front of the bus and stared out the window. Despite the obvious tension in the bus, I found that I was not bothered by it all. My relief that we had gotten away far outweighed any negative emotions the others in the bus may have been feeling. I wanted to try and go to sleep, but knew it would be impossible to manage, so I simply sat and stared out the window as the bus drove on.

It was only a few hours later that we came to realise we truly  _had_ made a mistake in saving Shidou.


	3. The Wheels on the Bus Crush Zombies' Skulls~

"What did you mean?"

I was brought out of my dazed state, staring out the window of the bus, when Takashi sat down next to me. I looked at him, trying to regain my senses after having been staring out the window for so long, and raised an eyebrow at him in question. I didn't quite understand what he was asking.

"You said you're expendable," he said. "What did you mean by that?"

"What does it sound like?" I asked, and a yawn escaped my lips. I was finally getting tired, it would seem.

"It sounds like bullshit," he said, fixing me with a firm stare. "Why are you expendable? What makes you think your life is worth any less than any of ours?"

"… You all have family to find," I said. I didn't want to say it; it was actually somewhat painful to admit out loud. "I have one person who could be considered my family, and they're not only out of reach, they don't particularly give a shit. That's why, Takashi. Your families are waiting for you, probably even  _looking_ for you … but I don't have anyone like that. That's why I'm expendable."

There was an uncomfortable silence that felt like it lasted a lot longer than it actually did. Anyone else in my position probably would've cried, but I was experienced at holding back tears.

"Not to me," said Takashi. "You're my best friend, Paul … you've been there when I've been going through so much shit. I never asked you to, but you were there anyway. And there's no one I'd rather have with me in a survival situation. So don't go dying on me, you got it?"

I was genuinely stunned into silence. You see, the thing with me and Takashi is that we never had to have long conversations with each other. We were both relatively quiet when it came to social situations, so when we were in each other's company, we could say very little but still understand what the other was trying to say perfectly. However, I had never gotten the sense that  _any_ of my friends thought this highly of me, and as such, I was in no way prepared for this.

"… Takashi …" It was all I could bring myself to say, I was so stunned.

"No one ever stuck up for me like you did," Kouta said, and I turned to look at him. He was sitting next to Takagi-san, who seemed to be trying her best to look like she wasn't listening in on the conversation. "Whenever people picked on me, I normally just stood there and took it, tried to laugh it off because no one ever did anything about it … but whenever you were around, you told them where they could shove it. And that other time, when you found that guy beating me up, and you ended up sending him to the nurse's office …  _no one_  has ever stood up for me like that." He smiled at me. "Like Komuro said, don't you dare die on us, Paul. I'd hate to lose you."

This time a tear did manage to escape from my eye, but I was quick to wipe it away before anyone noticed. "Damn it, you two …" I said, then let out a little laugh. "All right, I won't go getting myself killed … at least, not intentionally." We shared a small laugh, and the tension was eased.

I moved my eyes over them and around the bus, and eventually my eyes landed on Busujima-san. She was looking in this direction, but the second my eyes landed on her, she moved her eyes away, almost like she was afraid to make eye contact …

_Curious,_ I thought. I didn't know what that look in her eyes had been before she'd turned them away, but it sure as hell wasn't a glare …  _What the hell's up with her?_

Silence reigned once again after that. The only sounds that could be heard were coming from the outside of the bus, and they were anything but pleasant. There was the occasional bump against the front of the bus whenever it hit a zombie in the road, along with the cracks and splats that could only barely be heard when they were crushed beneath our wheels. Outside, the streets were war-torn. Every now and then, an explosion could be heard from somewhere outside, though I never once actually saw one. I saw a lot of flaming buildings, and there was a lot of smoke rising into the air both close and at a distance, but that was about it. One of the students at the back started talking to everyone, but I paid little attention.

Until he started shouting, anyway.

"I'm telling you!" the student, a blonde guy, yelled at everyone on the bus. "We'll only be in danger if we keep going like this! And anyway!" His shouting was beginning to annoy me. "Why should we have to go with Komuro and these guys? You're the only ones who decided to go back to town! Shouldn't we have looked for a safe place in the dorms or in the school!?"

The bus grazed the side of a car. The owner's yelling quickly faded into the distance.

"He's right …" said another male student, this one with pale skin and black hair. "If we keep this up, we're just putting ourselves in danger. We should hole ourselves up somewhere. Like the convenience store we just passed by …"

_Did we pass by a store …?_ I asked in my mind as I hummed, staring out the window once again. I may have been looking out the window, but I really wasn't paying much attention to what we were passing by. If I was being honest, I was just glad to finally have the opportunity to get some rest, though all of the shouting prevented me from drifting off to sleep, as my yawning mouth was begging me to do. I tried my best to focus on what was outside only to see a man jumping out of a burning, crashing helicopter.  _Shit, that's just fucking tragic …_

"It's not too late!" the blonde asshole continued. "Plus, I—"

That was when the bus suddenly jerked to a stop. The sudden stop caused me to fly forward, and while I managed to keep myself seated, unfortunately my forehead ended up colliding with the metal top of the seat in front of me. I immediately brought a hand up to it and found that I was bleeding slightly, but it was nothing to fuss over; it would probably dry up in a couple of minutes. I managed to focus myself enough to see that Marikawa-sensei was leaning out of her seat to glare at the people at the back of the bus.

"That's enough!" she yelled, fixing them with a glare. Because her seatbelt was still hooked up, it was squeezing her shirt as she leaned over, making her incredibly large breasts practically hang on display for all to see. I'm man enough to admit that it made me blush, though what with the pain in my head I didn't really notice it at the time. "I can't drive like this!" I wasn't the only one, either. Both Takashi and Kouta had their mouths slightly agape as their eyes fixed on Mawikawa-sensei's bosom.

The blonde guy who had been yelling seemed to struggle with his words for a moment. I turned to look at him, as did most of our group, but his eyes only seemed to zone in on Takashi. "What's your problem?" he asked aggressively. "What're you looking at? You wanna fight!?"

I mentally prepared myself to get up and start beating on him if he got too aggressive toward my friend.

"Then what do  _you_ want to do?" Busujima-san asked calmly.

The blonde guy turned his glare on her for a moment, which pissed me off a little, then pointed a finger at Takashi like he was accusing him of something. "I don't like him!" he yelled. "I don't like this guy! Acting like he's the big shit!"

I was silently seething. The urge to punch this guy was growing by the second.

"Where are you getting that?" asked Takashi. "When did I ever say anything to you?"

The blonde guy went silent for a moment. Then his teeth began to grind together and his fists clenched. "Why, you …!" he growled. He made a sudden lunge for Takashi, and I quickly grabbed up my golf club and stood up, but …

… Rei had beaten me to the punch.

She had slammed the side of her makeshift spear directly into the asshole's stomach. A small amount of vomit flew from his mouth, and he fell to his knees, groaning out in pain.

I put my golf club down and sat back in my seat. I continued to glare at the student as he writhed on the ground, however. I would have gladly knocked his lights out given half a chance. If it had been me in Rei's position, I probably would have gone for the face …

"You scum," Rei said to the blonde guy. She talked down to him, like she was talking to an insect she had crushed with her shoe.

The slow, clear sound of clapping took everyone's attention away from the downed student. It was Shidou. He was clapping his hands together with a wide, calculating grin on his face.

"Most impressive!" Shidou said loudly. I immediately levelled my glare at him. My ethics wouldn't have allowed me to leave him to die at the school, but as I looked at him then, I couldn't help but regret not trying to talk Takashi into leaving him as Rei had. There was just something …  _wrong_  about him. "Superb teamwork, Komuro-kun, Miyamoto-san! But … if fights are going to break out like this, then it backs up my position." He walked near us at the front of the bus, leering. His eyes narrowed, and I  _really_ didn't like the look he had on his face. "That's why we need a leader."

"I take it there's only one candidate for the job?" Takagi-san asked, though it was very clear she knew the answer. We all did.

"I'm a teacher, Takagi-san," said Shidou, like he was talking to a small child. "Everyone else is a student. That alone speaks volumes in my merit."

"Maybe if it was a teacher who did his fucking job," I said. I made no effort to hide the disdain in my voice. He taught, yes, but he very rarely did anything else teachers did. The bullying that ran rampant in his classes was a prime example of that; as a matter of fact, I'd heard rumours that he often took part in it himself.

He ignored me entirely, instead turning to face the people at the back of the bus. "How about it, everyone?" he asked them. "If you go with me … I will do whatever it takes to keep you all alive, all right?"

The blonde student on the floor stopped huffing and puffing for breath and looked up at Shidou in clear admiration. The students at the back of the bus began cheering for Shidou, clapping for him. I genuinely couldn't believe what I was seeing. Surely they weren't  _that_ stupid …

Shidou took a bow for the students who were clapping for him, then turned back to us with open arms and a wide grin on his face. "… And there you have it. Through a majority vote, I have become the leader." The cocky way he said it finally cemented just how I felt about him – I hated the vile bastard. "Starting now …"

Rei abruptly turned away from Shidou and walked to the very front of the bus. "Sensei, open the doors … please open them!" she said to Marikawa-sensei, who was looking at her inquisitively. "I'm getting off!" Strangely, I was shocked but by no means surprised by this turn of events. Rei's hatred of Shidou had been very clear from the second we saw him running toward the bus. The thing that really surprised me, however, was that Marikawa-sensei actually  _opened the doors_ and let her  _leave_. Takashi made to go after her, but she had already gone out the doors by the time he got there. "I won't have it! I don't want to be anywhere  _near_ that guy!"

"If she's saying she can't go along with the group, then …" Shidou sighed, placing a hand against his forehead in clearly fake disappointment and sadness, "… nothing we can do about it."

"You're just a model teacher, you know that?" I asked sarcastically. "It's so  _inspiring_ , the way you 'look out' for your students. How could we  _ever_ have doubted your fantastic fucking leaderships skills?"

I actually thought I heard him growl at me for a moment. Then he coughed, I assume in an attempt to hide it.

A moment later, Takashi jumped off the bus after Rei. Admittedly, I had expected him to do so, knowing what he was like when it concerned her, and I also knew that if anyone could talk Rei back on the bus, it was him. That being said, I also knew it was an extremely bad idea for the both of them to be outside the bus, so a sense of worry began building up inside me.

"Just until town!" I heard Takashi saying. "Put up with him until we get to town. It's dangerous out there!"

"I told you you'd regret it!" Rei yelled.

"Either way, for now—!"

Whatever Takashi was going to say was cut off by the sound of screeching tires. Looking out the window, I saw another bus, this one out of control and rocketing toward where Takashi and Rei were standing at an incredibly fast pace.

" _Guys_ ,  _fucking move_!" I shouted out the window of the bus. It was rare that I let my emotions appear in my voice, but I couldn't stop the panic and worry from entering as I shouted at my two friends.

I saw Takashi push Rei out of the way just before the other bus obscured my vision of them. The bus collided with a few abandoned cars, and the resulting explosion was deafening. There was ringing in my ears from the noise, and it almost seemed to shake the very earth beneath our feet … or the bus' wheels, as the case was. I managed to look out the window again, and saw that there was now a hulking wall of metal and fire separating us from Takashi and Rei.

Busujima-san stepped out of the bus and began to yell over the wreckage. "Komuro-kun, are you okay!?"

"Let's meet up … at the Eastern Police Station!" Takashi's voice was barely audible over the roar of the fire.

"What time!?" Busujima-san asked.

"Five!" Takashi yelled back. "If not today, then tomorrow at the same time!"

Busujima-san closed the doors quickly, then turned to Marikawa-sensei. "Nurse Marikawa!" she said. "We can't go this way any more."

"Okay!" Marikawa-sensei said as she started up the engines once again. "I'm going to go back and try a different route!" Once she'd gotten the bus up and started again, we were going back the way we came. The scenery wasn't any less depressing the second time around.

As the drive went on, I couldn't help but notice Kouta looking at me in some level of concern. "What?" I asked him.

"Nothing …" he said, but a look I gave him got him to continue. "It's just that, other than that conversation we had earlier, you haven't really said all that much for a while."

I shrugged. "I'm tired, and I didn't really see the need to," I said. "And besides," I took glances at both Busujima-san and Takagi-san, "I'm pretty sure you're the only one left on this bus who wouldn't complain about me speaking."

Takagi-san huffed and turned away from me, as was expected. But Busujima-san averted her eyes again, like she didn't want to make eye contact with me … I couldn't help but associate that sort of behaviour with …  _shame_  …  _But that_ can't  _be it,_ I thought, shaking my head of such nonsense.  _After all this time, why would she be ashamed now?_

Another yawn escaped my lips, so I tipped my head back and rested it on the back of my seat.

I fell asleep surprisingly quickly.

* * *

 

Saeko Busujima looks at the sleeping form of Paul Blake and feelings of shame and guilt begin to bubble up in her once again. She doesn't know if it is the fact that he had finally spoken back to her or the stress of the situation, but she has finally started feeling things that she knows she should have been feeling all along.

She  _knows_ her treatment of him was unfounded, but … she simply can't help it. He just … he reminds her  _so much_ of that incident that it is hard to look at him and not feel a spike of negative emotions. He had never argued against her before, so she had never felt particularly bad about it, though she has always known she should have, that he has done literally nothing to deserve her scorn. But again … she can't help what she feels.

She had listened to the conversation he had had with Takashi and Kouta earlier, though she had not initially meant to. The bus had been quiet, and once she had started hearing them she couldn't turn her attention away. That was when the guilt and shame had started to set in. Saeko just can't help but think that maybe she is part of the reason Paul considers himself expendable. She knows what kind of effect the way she treats him can have on a person, and … she isn't an idiot. She has  _seen_ the way he looks at her.

The look on his face every time she does something to him … the sheer look of  _hurt_ on his face … She had never really taken notice before, but now … she feels bad. She feels  _awful_. And it isn't just the hurt looks, either … Saeko has seen how he looks at her when she isn't tormenting him …

_He looks surprisingly peaceful when he's sleeping,_ she thinks to herself absently, not even realising she is thinking it.

It comes as a surprise to her that he can sleep at all. Kouta seems to be nodding off, but it has taken him quite a while. She knows she will sleep, too, when she finally decides to, but that is just because of how she is. She is strong, and she knows it. But it is always a surprise, albeit a pleasant one, when others display a similar strength.

Saeko decides she is going to try and be at least civil with Paul from now on. She doesn't know if she will be successful, what with the negative emotions bubbling up in her whenever she sees him, but she is going to give it her best. He doesn't deserve the treatment she has given him, and she is going to do her best to stop, but it is just so  _hard_  …

Paul looks so much like  _him_.

She clears the memories that are beginning to flood her mind, and decides to call it a night. She lays her head back for comfort's sake and closes her eyes.

It actually takes a little longer for her to get to sleep than it had taken Paul.


End file.
